


Correspondence.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Highlander: The Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-08
Updated: 2006-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:37:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day after the double Quickening, Methos tries to explain things to the Watchers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Correspondence.

`From: a.pierson@XXX.org  
To: a.zoll@XXX.org  
Subject: Checking in  
Date: 11 Nov 1996`

 

Amy,

Let me preface this by saying that I'm well-aware that this will end up in the Methos  
Chronicle and that you won't believe a single word of it. As a historian myself, I don't   
blame you. Almost none of this can be corroborated by outside sources.

Last night I took the head of my brother, Silas. Before that, I took Kristin's head (not   
Macleod. No, Dawson didn't lie to you. He didn't know it was me). And before Kristin,   
the last head I took was in 1784.

I didn't join the Watchers to hunt. Despite all that's been recorded in recent years about   
Koren, Caspari, and Silas, I haven't been a headhunter in two *thousand* years. I first   
heard about the Watchers so long ago I can't remember when, but I've known about your   
organization for at least three thousand years. I can't say that I gave the Watchers more   
than an idle thought until the eighties. I was considering a new life and was spending   
most of my time in libraries while waiting for the paperwork to go through. That's when I   
found that lost chronicle. When Don came to explain, it seemed like the perfect fit. When   
I'd read through my lost chronicle, I kept itching to pick up a pen and make corrections,   
to set the record straight.

If I know the team, and I do, you've spent the last week going through the Methos   
Chronicle and made note of every change to it I ever made so it can be "fixed". Please   
don't. There were no lies and everything I took out was something that had never   
happened to me.

Yes, I will admit that it frightened the living shit out of me that there were people whose   
only job was to find me. It still does, because the potential for hunters is staggering. Don't   
lie to me and don't let the Tribunal lie to you. I'm old enough to remember the massacre   
of the Pythian Immortal community and I know that Watchers were behind it. My son   
died in it, killed by his mortal wife. And others, so many others. But you've changed.   
Observe and record, never interfere. I liked that. It's a good philosophy and I'll admit I   
didn't understand why you had the Methos project when you didn't want to interfere in   
the Game. Finding me would be putting my head on a stick and you aren't total fools. I   
assumed you knew the dangers of finding the eldest. (I'm not the eldest and I wish you   
would stop calling me that. There are at least four still living who are older than me.) But   
you still went on merrily with your project.

It took me a long time to realize that you weren't trying to find *me*. You were trying to   
find the ideal Immortal. Your Methos.

I can't even begin to explain how much I despise that name. I stopped using it when I left   
the Horsemen because it had too much of a reputation. When I heard that there was an   
imposter half my age using it, I wished him all the luck, because he would draw all the   
challenges towards him. Methos was not my first name; I took it on because it reminded   
me of something my mother used to say when it rained. Damned if I can remember what   
it was. Everything's blurry before I took my first Quickening. I remember my mother and   
my father. I remember my first wife. I remember dying.

I don't remember very much else. Scraps of memories sometimes come to me in dreams,   
but I don't know anymore if they are memories, if they are memories of memories, or   
even memories of something I read when the Colossus still stood and took to heart. I   
know I look very much like an uncle of mine and that lead to intense speculation in my   
village. They thought I was his bastard. But I'm damned if I can remember if the man I   
knew as my father took me in because he was our holy man and so took in orphans and   
castouts, or if he was a kind man who took in a foundling because otherwise I would have   
died.

It bothers me, sometimes, that I can't remember.

I started writing things down as soon as I learned what writing was. I've lost so many   
years of my life and so many of them blend together. I once spent three centuries in a   
monastery, perfectly happy, perfectly content, and didn't write a blessed word in my   
journals. There simply wasn't anything interesting going on, and that was what appealed   
to me about that life. It was so routine, so ordinary. It didn't seem that way at the time to   
the other monks, but after living as a raider for a thousand years, minor emergencies such   
as famines and superstitious townspeople didn't bother me.

Yes. My life as a raider. The reason why

I've stared at those words for the last half hour and I can't finish it. Fine. You want to   
know why? I know you have Cassandra's claims written down, I know they've been the   
recipient of much speculation. And, yes, they're true.

On the most basic, basic level.

Yes, I did kill. I did rape. I did murder by the tens, by the hundreds. I pillaged and   
burned. And I liked it. I liked it a lot.

Please keep in mind that this was three *millennia* ago.

Imagine, if you will, a grown man with a thousand years under his belt but who has the   
emotional maturity of a modern day fourteen year old boy. I was in a group marriage at   
the time, the senior husband of five, with seven wives. Twelve adults, thirty-six children.   
I could give you their names if you want them.

What happened to them?

They died. It was wartime, but every time was wartime in those days, in that...no, I don't   
know where it was. I know what we called it, I know where it was relative to other lands,   
but I'm no cartographer. I didn't see a map until AD 34. We lived between two mountains   
and shared a spring with other families in the clan.

An army came through, killed everyone, and took all our food. They needed the rations   
and we couldn't stand against them. I was the only survivor.

Remember that fourteen year old boy? Well, if I couldn't be happy, if I couldn't have my   
family, any of my families (I'd had thirty-odd before then. Not all of them died on me like   
that, but they all died), if I couldn't be happy, then no one could. I was mad at the world,   
at the gods, and I had something no one else had. I was Immortal and I couldn't die.

The Game?

What Game?

I didn't hear of the Game until a handful of centuries after that. We took Quickenings for   
the same reason everyone does these days. We have different official reasons for them   
now, but it's always the same *why*. We do it because we want to. We kill because we   
like the power. We take Quickenings because we love the way it makes us feel.   
Headhunters are usually young. Hunters who grow up learn to swallow the hunger and   
push it to the back of our minds. There's no Alcoholics Anonymous for us. We avoid   
fights not because we don't want to fight or because we're cowards. We avoid fights   
because we love them, because we can never get enough of them.

No. Because *I* can never get enough of them.

I'd met Koren before. We'd fought in a war together and I'd remembered the way he   
fought. Others fought because they had to or because they felt they were obligated to, all   
the while lying to themselves because we are all, Immortals and mortals alike,   
bloodthirsty bastards once we're stripped down to the core. There is nothing like *kill or   
die* to make you understand the value of your own fragile existence.

The records are correct. I found Koren. A while later, we found Silas and Caspari. And   
we killed.

It wasn't for vengeance. It started out that way, but it quickly, oh so very quickly, became   
solely about the power. It became about what we could do, what we could take, how far   
we could stretch ourselves and still be victorious in war. We lived as raiders, as hired   
killers, and we were feared.

None of this is in Watcher records. But I suppose it is now.

Mind you, we didn't kill straight for a thousand years, but it's a nice round number. Give   
or take, I rode with Koren and the others for over fifteen hundred years.

That's not really a five hundred year discrepancy. Even Koren didn't have the stomach to   
do nothing but kill for even fifty years nonstop. We took breaks. Caspari collected a   
harem. Silas bred horses. Koren and I traveled, learning the terrain by walking it instead   
of riding. We tried to find his birthplace but we never did. We tried ten times before   
Koren gave up.

And here's another bit for the Chronicle, in the interest of historical accuracy, and   
because I know there's a Watcher pool on it. Sodomy was the norm in a raider camp. We   
had female slaves around, but they didn't last. I know Koren has a documented history of   
rape. It's always amused me how even the Watchers have whitewashed his history. He   
didn't rape women. He raped young boys.

I know none of you will care, but pedophilia really is a very modern transgression.

Did I? Well, yes. Not as often, but I did. I don't excuse any of it; I'm simply trying to   
explain. The times were different. *I* was different.

And I hope you're still remembering that this was all before the birth of the bloody   
English *language*.

One of the things I've always prided myself on is my ability to adapt. I'm very good at   
make up. I'm very good at aging myself. Without it, I look like, and I don't know why I'm   
even telling you this shit, but I do like you, Amy, and I think you should know. I died   
when I was almost twenty.

I'm *very* good at aging myself. Take a look at the pictures taken when I first joined, my   
recruitment photographs. That's me, almost. Almost, but it's close. When Koren had   
killed his slaves, he turned to me.

Did I mind it? Not really.

Did I *like* it?

That's a very good question. And the answer is yes.

No, I won't explain it. No, there weren't any power games. No, he never held a sword to   
my neck and made it a matter of life or death. We never raised a sword against a brother.   
If we did, we'd be just like mortals. Manipulative, treacherous, untrustworthy. That wasn't   
us. We were raiders, unscrupulous rapists, but we had our moral code. We didn't raise a   
sword against each other, we split everything equally, and we shared everything.

It sounds very peaceful, if you ignore the fact that we were unscrupulous murdering   
bastards. But we were brothers in everything except birth (or maybe we were. I was a   
thousand years Silas' senior, but he always felt like someone I'd always known. And no   
one knows where we come from, after all.)

But I grew out of them. They never stopped being fun, but they became annoying. After   
that long together, there isn't anything new to talk about. You've run out of stories, out of   
jokes, out of patience. So I left.

I traveled.

Time passed.

Time still passes. Sometimes it's slower, sometimes it's faster. Sometimes I turn around   
and it's a hundred years after where it should be. I think I might have slept through the   
black death, because I honestly didn't notice it. Or maybe that was simply because there   
have always been plagues. There have always been murderers. When I put down the   
sword, I did it knowing that there was someone else out there picking it up. When I   
stopped killing, I was under no illusions. The weak would still die. The attrition rate of   
young Immortals would grow proportionately to their numbers. The only thing that   
changed was that *I* wasn't the one killing them.

And more time passed.

What the fuck is five thousand years anyway? Five thousand Januaries? I predate this   
calendar. I think in five calendars simultaneously and it's easiest to think in seasons. Dry   
season, wet season, snow, sleet, hail. My birth language didn't have a word for snow.

It also didn't have a word for eternal.

I don't know what five thousand is. It's too big even for me. There's no secret to Methos'   
existence. There's no great truth. There's no one answer. Fuck that, there are no   
*answers*, period. There are only questions.

What did I do that's so amazing? I stayed alive. I did what I wanted to do, and sometimes   
what I didn't want to do. I killed and I loved and I fucked and I killed and I killed and I   
*killed*.

I've made rivers run red with blood and I've written sonnets on the beauty of a woman's   
wrist. There are no contradictions. I'm still me and I've always been me. It's only that   
sometimes, at some times, in some places, I'm more me than other times. I've relaxed   
with Dawson and traded horror stories about unreadable Watcher handwriting. I've gotten   
drunk with Duncan Macleod and reminisced about long-gone days.

And I went on raids with Koren and slept with him more than willingly, so, by all means,   
collect your fifty bucks. But that was eons ago, ages ago.

But he tempted me. He returned from the mists and tempted me. Killing mortals doesn't   
amuse me anymore, but I've missed the camaraderie. I've missed his shark smiles. I've   
missed his laugh.

But not enough. I didn't miss him enough. Yet I couldn't kill him. Macleod did it for me,   
that's a matter of Watcher record. But I put the sword into his hands. I told Macleod   
where Koren was. I gave Macleod the loaded gun and told him where to shoot it. I did   
kill Koren. I simply didn't take his Quickening.

Does that make it better? Does that excuse it? I'd spent years wondering what I would do   
if Koren ever returned, I'd drawn up plans, escape routes, and when Koren did come, it   
was still impossible to say no. I still couldn't kill him.

I'm still human, Amy. I may have been a murderer, may still be one, may have taken   
more Quickenings than anyone can wrap their heads around (no, not even me. What are   
centuries but merely a hundred years, a mere thousand moments?) But I'm still human.   
Koren was my brother, my sometimes-lover, the other half of my soul. Killing him would   
have been like killing myself.

And I did kill him. I all but took his head myself. I don't think that makes me noble. I   
think it makes me weak. A coward. Once again, I've failed my family, but this time, they   
failed me first. I stayed out of the Game for two hundred years, until last night. I didn't   
take a head, I ignored all challenges. I had my two hundred years of peace and I liked it.

There's no great secret I'm hiding. I know you don't believe a word of this. I made   
corrections in the Methos Chronicle because someone but me should remember. In a   
cold, detached, murderous part of myself, I knew that Koren would come back. I knew   
that one of us would die. And, goddammit, I wanted someone else to remember things   
how they really were. It wasn't enough that *I* knew the truth. If the Watchers are going   
to place so much import in my life, then the least they can do is get it right.

So write it down, Amy, and don't wrong the rights. Because the only lie I told was that I   
was mortal. And even then...we're none of us eternal. At this rate, I'll die before you will.

Because I suppose I'm back in the Game now. I've tasted blood and I don't have the   
strength anymore to resist. Koren's ghost is calling me, my head is ablaze with Silas'   
memories and anguished screams, and the Gathering's coming on fast. It's the least I can   
do to pick up the sword again. It's the least I can do to fight for my neck, be the last   
surviving brother, be the final Immortal standing. It's the least I can do to try. So I'm   
going to try. I've survived this long. What's a few more thousand years?

Nothing. They're absolutely nothing. It's time to explore new horizons.

Don't try to find me. I'll stay in touch.

 

With regret,  
Adam Pierson


End file.
